


Error 404: "Little" Brother Not Found

by profdanglais



Series: Modern Misthaven [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, F/M, Lieutenant Duckling, Lieutenant Killian Jones, Lieutenant Killian Jones/Princess Emma Swan, Modern Lieutenant Duckling, Princess Emma, Princess Emma Swan, brothers jones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profdanglais/pseuds/profdanglais
Summary: Liam Jones loves his little brother, he truly does. And if that love takes the form of good natured teasing, well, what’s the harm in that? Sure it annoys Killian but that’s kind of the point, and anyway Killian’s still just a lad. Liam’s sure he only just started shaving last year at the earliest. So when he stumbles on Killian mid-dalliance with a certain blonde princess, Liam is forced to reassess a lot of things about his “little” brother, many of which do. not. compute.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Series: Modern Misthaven [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1752649
Comments: 25
Kudos: 313





	Error 404: "Little" Brother Not Found

Liam Jones likes to think of himself as a reasonable man. He’s an honest man, and an honourable one. Those two attributes have never been in question. He’s frequently an impatient man, and sometimes a judgemental one, as his little brother Killian tells him frequently. Killian also calls him a stubborn arse, and Liam has to admit that this might also be valid, but when Killian accuses him of being _unreasonable_ , well, that’s where he draws the line. 

He’s perfectly reasonable. _Perfectly_. What’s _un_ reasonable are Killian’s objections to a) being called ‘little brother’—he is little, after all, by comparison to Liam’s greater height and broader shoulders—and b) his refusal to allow his older and wiser and _bigger_ brother to help him find a girl. 

“I do not require your input on that subject, thank you very much,” Killian snarls. “Kindly back the fuck off.” 

“But Tink is really nice,” wheedles Liam, as they walk from where his ship is moored in the harbour and into the town to have some lunch. Killian no longer serves on the same ship, having accepted a secondment about a year ago to work on a highly specialised project for the Royal Council. But whenever Liam is in port they make a point of spending as much time as they can together. 

“I’m sure she is,” Killian sighs. “Not interested.” 

“She’s pretty, too.” 

“I don’t doubt it. Still not interested.” 

“Look, Killian, I’m only trying to help—” 

“No, you’re trying to control me as you always do. I’m twenty-four years old, Liam! I’m an officer in the Royal Navy, same as you, and trust me when I tell you I am more than capable of finding my own women!” 

Liam scoffs at this. Killian only just started shaving, he’s sure of it, and the last time he witnessed his little brother trying to interact with a female Killian stumbled over his own feet and spilled his drink down the front of her dress. 

He still brings that one up. 

-

The next day he goes to visit Killian at the project’s headquarters in the palace library. On his way there he runs into Princess Emma—almost literally, as she’s not paying any attention to where she’s going, strolling along with a sort of dazed, dreamy look in her eyes, and he does his best to catch her as respectfully as possible by the elbow before she slams into him. 

“Begging your pardon, Your Highness,” he says, with a small bow. 

“Oh! Captain Jones!” Emma blinks in surprise. “Er—I apologise, my mind was wandering.” 

Liam bows again. “No trouble at all, Princess.” 

He stands aside so she can pass and watches her go with a smile on his face, wondering if he should tease Killian about this now or wait until later. Liam flatters himself he has a good relationship with Princess Emma; he served as a member of her personal guard for a short time and they have always got on well. Killian on the other hand, always flushes bright pink whenever her name is mentioned and makes stuttering excuses for why he has a pressing need to be anywhere that she is not. 

It’s adorable, Liam thinks. Killian has a little crush. 

He finds his brother in the palace library, leaning against a bookshelf like he needs it to hold him up. His colour is high and his hair is sticking up at the back. 

“Lieutenant Jones!” Liam barks. “You are out of uniform!” 

“I—what?” Killian scowls. “What are you on about, Liam, there’s nothing wrong with my uniform.” 

Wordlessly, and with crisp, precise movements, Liam withdraws a comb from his uniform coat and hands it to his brother. Killian’s scowl deepens but he takes it and carefully tidies his hair before handing it back. 

“What have you been doing in here that got your hair all mussed up?” Liam teases. “Research got you excited?” 

“Something like that,” Killian mutters. “I—must’ve tugged on it when I was thinking.” 

“Mmmm,” says Liam, and decides the best time to torture little brothers is _always_. “I ran into the princess on my way here,” he says casually, biting back a grin when Killian’s ears go pink. 

“Did you?” He’s clearly trying hard to be casual but his voice comes out as more of a croak. 

“Yep. It makes sense, I suppose. Her private apartments aren’t too far from here.” 

Killian clears his throat. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.” 

“Do you ever see her? Or do you hide in the bushes when she goes by?”

“Liam—” Killian growls warningly.

“I’m surprised you accepted this posting, actually, seeing as it means you’re working so close to where she lives. What are you going to do if she stops by to check on your progress? Stammer like a schoolboy in front of the rest of the project team? Run away?” 

Killian’s eyes flash. “I expect I’d manage,” he snarls. “As I keep telling you I’m an adult—” 

“—an _adult_ , yes—”

“—and I do actually know how to speak to women!” 

Liam smirks. “Somehow I don’t think Ariel would agree.” 

“That was _eight_ years ago, Liam! I was sixteen! And you know Ariel and I are friends now. You are literally the only person who ever talks about that anymore.” 

“Well—” 

“Do you know what your problem is?” Killian interrupts. 

“I only have one?” 

“The biggest of your many, many bloody irritating problems is that you refuse to see me as anything but a child. Not that you _can’t_ you just _won’t_.” He sighs and runs a hand over his face. “I wish I knew how to make you.” 

Liam feels a pang of guilt. He does rag on Killian quite a lot, it’s true, but it comes from a place of love. He’d been solely responsible for raising his brother from a time when he was barely more than a boy himself, and he loves Killian fiercely. He just doesn’t quite know how to express it. 

“Hey,” he says, hooking his arm around Killian’s neck and ruffling his hair again. “Don’t be like that, little brother. I’m sorry.” 

Killian pulls out of Liam’s grip and makes an ostentatious show of smoothing down his hair. “Sure,” he says. 

Liam feels bad, and he doesn’t like it. “So, um, why don’t you show me what you’ve been working on?” he says, hoping this will distract Killian from the previous teasing. 

It does. Killian brightens instantly. “Really?” he says. “You actually want to see it?” 

“Of course I do.” 

Liam doesn’t quite understand Killian’s project; it involves lots of complex equations and research into things that he never had the chance to study, but he’s immensely proud of his brother for being chosen to work on it. Killian is the youngest member of the team by a good ten years and his selection was a tremendous honour. Liam nearly burst with pride when he heard of it. 

Not that he would ever tell Killian that. 

Killian’s face is eager as he shows Liam the research he’s been doing and the presentation he’s preparing for the King and the Royal Council. Liam smiles and nods and lets him talk, his mind wandering.

-

Two days later Liam is back at the palace on business and he decides to see if Killian is free for dinner. He knocks on the door of the quarters his brother shares with the other members of the research team, who inform him that Killian isn’t there. 

“He’s not around here much,” one of them says, with a knowing smirk. “I mean, I wouldn’t be either, in his shoes. Lucky git.” 

“Can’t remember the last time he actually slept here,” adds another. “He ‘works late’ a lot.” The man makes quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “I’m guessing right now he’s busy ‘working’ real hard, you know?”

Liam does not, in fact, know. He has no idea what they could be talking about but it’s clear they think he does and so he plays along. 

“Right. Well, er, better luck next time, I guess.” 

He walks back to his ship, wondering what on earth Killian could be doing with his evenings if he’s not spending them in his quarters. Surely he’s not actually still at the library? 

That lad needs to get himself a girl, Liam thinks. If only he would agree to a date with Tink.

\- 

The following Thursday is the day of Killian’s big presentation to the Royal Council. Liam arrives a few minutes early, thinking he might have to help calm his brother’s nerves. He takes a seat in the council chambers and looks around for Killian but he is nowhere to be seen. 

Then the door opens and Killian arrives, quite at his ease as he greets the council members and bows to the king. Liam frowns. He expected his brother to be cripplingly nervous, flushing and stammering through his presentation, but the reality could hardly be more different. Killian stands confidently at the lectern, looking older than his years—when did his facial hair get so thick, Liam wonders—and when he begins to speak his voice is deep and calm, with a note of authority Liam has never heard in it before. 

The crowd is riveted, hanging on his every word. The other members of the project team, the Royal Council, none can take their eyes off him. The king is actually taking notes, nodding to himself as Killian speaks. 

Liam catches a glimpse of Princess Emma sitting near the back of the chamber. She’s not officially on the Council though of course she is heir to the throne and so he’s not surprised by her presence at an important event. He is a little bit thrown by the look on her face, though. It’s soft and a bit awed, with shining eyes and flushed cheeks and a sweet smile on her lips. He’s never seen her look like that before. 

Killian concludes his presentation and opens the floor to questions from the audience. There are many, more than Liam anticipated, but Killian handles them all with aplomb, giving knowledgeable, definitive answers and not flinching even when the king himself challenges some of his conclusions. Killian stands straight with his shoulders square as they debate, and Liam gets the strangest feeling that both he and the king are enjoying themselves. 

Liam is proud. He’s always been proud of his little brother, of course he has. Of course he knows that Killian is smart and tough and hard-working, but this—this is a new kind of proud. Like he’s seeing his brother as a peer, for the first time. 

When the presentation is officially over Killian mingles a bit in the crowd and Liam debates going to speak with him. He wants to tell his brother about this new pride he’s feeling, but he’s not sure if he can find the words or if this is really the time or place. But then he sees Killian heading off through one of the council chamber’s side exits and thinks he might take the opportunity to catch Killian and have a few words in private, and so he goes to follow his brother out the door. 

So does Princess Emma. Liam bites his lip to stop his smile when he sees her heading for the same exit through which Killian just disappeared. Because yes, he did just realise that he might need to start treating Killian as more of an equal but that doesn’t change the fact that he’ll always be a big brother and he can’t help wanting to witness Killian stammer and blush when he runs into the princess. 

He slips through the door and follows Emma until she turns a corner, then hurries his pace a bit so as not to lose her. 

“Well,” he hears her say as he approaches the corner. “Fancy meeting you here, Lieutenant.” 

Liam halts just before the turn, waiting for Killian’s stammering reply. Instead he hears something that has his jaw dropping in astonishment. Killian’s voice, pitched lower than usual and with a flirtatious note in it that Liam has never, not even in his wildest dreams, imagined he might hear from his own little brother. 

“What a remarkable coincidence,” Killian replies. 

“Isn’t it just.” 

“Whatever shall I do with you, princess, now I’ve discovered you here in this very dark corridor?” Killian growls. 

“I’m sure you’ve got a few ideas.” Emma’s voice is breathless. “Brilliant man like you.” 

“Oh I do love, I absolutely do. Though I confess they all require you to be wearing rather fewer clothes.”

“Those are my favourite ones,” Emma gasps, then Liam hears the unmistakable sound of kissing. 

They’re kissing. His brother and the princess. They’re just around the damned corner bloody well making out and flirting and talking about sex. 

Sex. 

His brother. 

And the princess. 

The _princess._

The king’s daughter. 

Is talking about sex. 

With his brother. 

What 

What 

_Whaaatttt_

Liam’s jaw lolls and his throat works, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously, but no sound comes out. He doesn’t know what noise he’d even make if he could, he certainly isn’t capable of forming any words. He sidles up to the edge of the wall and pokes his head around the corner, just far enough to get visual confirmation of what he still can’t believe he heard. And there it is. There they are, wrapped up in each other with her back pressed against the wall and their mouths fused together. 

Liam was almost hoping that it had all been some insane mistake, that maybe there was another lieutenant waiting in the corridor for the princess and speaking with his brother’s voice. But no. That’s Killian, unmistakably him. It looks like him and sounds like him, everything is him except that this man—yes, _man_ —is kissing and flirting and making some pretty damned blatant allusions to sex. With the princess. Sex that he—that _they_ —ack

Argh 

Ermmmbbgggggghhhhhh

Liam’s brain makes a noise like an old dial-up modem as he watches Killian’s mouth leave Emma’s to trail sucking kisses down the neck she arches back for him, watches as his brother’s hand slides up the bloody royal thigh and under the hem of her dress and between—no. No, he can’t. He can’t see that. He can’t think it. He. Just. _Can’t_. 

“Fuck.” Emma gasps, rolling her hips against Killian’s hand. “Fuck, Killian.” 

“That is definitely the aim here, love.” 

“Oh, God,” Emma moans. “We can’t do this here.”

“Can’t we?” 

“No, we can’t.” 

_No you bloody well can’t_ , Liam’s brain screams. _Please, please, please stop doing this here!_

Emma pushes Killian away and he takes a step back, giving her a smirk that is positively lewd as he slowly licks his fingers. She smirks back, completely unfazed, and saunters towards him with a swing in her hips, hooking her own fingers under the waistband of Killian’s uniform trousers. Trousers that Liam absolutely, positively refuses to notice are tented. _Impressively_ tented. Like perhaps Killian is right to object to being called _little_ brother.

_WHYYYYYYYYY_ wails his brain. 

“Why don’t you come back to my place, sailor, and ravish me properly,” she purrs, and Killian puts his hand on her arse—her _arse_ —his brother’s hand is on the princess of their bloody realm’s _arse_ —(it was someplace far worse a minute ago, but his brain shrivels a bit and warning klaxons begin to shrill in his head before he can think too much about that)—and Killian’s fingers are tracing the curve of the arse in question and curling around the princess’s hip as they head off towards her apartments, bodies moving together in the kind of perfect harmony that suggests that when they fuck it’s _hawt_. 

_Nonononononononononononononooooooooooooooo_ Liam’s brain is in full meltdown mode now, alarms shrilling and screens flashing error messages and he just. Cannot. Compute. 

He was prepared, almost very nearly prepared, to acknowledge that Killian is a grown man now, one well on his way to an impressive career and who has earned the respect of his colleagues and his king. But this—when— _how_ did his shy and nerdy little brother become smooth enough with women to pull a bloody princess? 

Where is the blushing? The stammering? The tripping over his own feet? 

_Where???_

-

The next day Liam visits Killian in the library again, finding him sitting quietly at a desk with his brow furrowed as he reads from a large, leather-bound book. His uniform is pristine and his hair tidy, and his reading glasses are slipping down his nose. Liam clears his throat and Killian looks up, his face creasing with a grin. 

“Liam! I was hoping you’d drop by. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you after the presentation yesterday.” 

“No. I, er. Um. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s all right.” Killian waves his apology away. “I left a bit earlier than I was anticipating, actually. Something came up.” 

Liam looks at him carefully to see if this is meant to be a joke, bitterly recalling how twenty-four hours ago it would have never even occurred to him to wonder whether Killian might be making a crude innuendo about his penis. Such a thing would have been as inconceivable as the idea of his brother even carrying on a conversation with Princess Emma, much less—

Killian’s smile begins to fade and Liam pulls himself together, claps his brother on the shoulder. “You did well yesterday,” he said. “I was proud of you.” 

Killian flushes with pleasure. “Thank you, brother,” he says. “It means a lot to hear that from you.” 

That blush is what does it. It’s so familiar, _too_ familiar, and with everything Liam now knows about Killian he simply cannot reconcile these two versions of him, his easy-blushing brother and Princess Emma’s lover and—

“You’re sleeping with her.” 

“I—what?” 

“The princess. You. I saw—and her. Kissing, and—and—how long has this been bloody going on?” 

“Ah.” Killian removes his glasses, folds them up, and places them in their case. He sets the case on the desk and stands, giving Liam a cool look that the elder Jones absolutely cannot meet. “I think perhaps we’d best discuss this someplace more private,” he says. 

He does not blush. 

Killian leads Liam out of the library and across the small, grassy quad that separates it from the royal living quarters. He nods to the guard at the entrance as they go inside and strides confidently through the maze of corridors to a door which he opens with a key that he selects from his own keychain. 

“Emma’s visiting hospitals today,” he says. “She won’t be back until late. We can talk here.” 

“This is—” Liam gulps. “This is the princess’s private apartments.” 

“Yes.” 

“To which you have a key.” 

“I live here. Not officially, of course, for the sake of the optics, but for all intents and purposes they are my apartments too.” 

“So then it’s not—not just—” 

“Not just sex?” Killian smirks. “No. We’ve been together about three years and it’s serious. I plan to marry her.” 

“But—you can’t marry a princess! You’re a—” 

“A lowly lieutenant in her father’s navy? Aye. And I certainly couldn’t marry her in that capacity. But as a valued and trusted adviser on the Royal Council? That would be rather a different story.” 

Liam feels comprehension begin to dawn. “That’s why you wanted to work on this project,” he says. 

“That’s why I wanted to work on this project,” Killian confirms. “And of course, it gives us a chance to live together normally, without attracting attention. Just to be absolutely certain this is what we want.” 

Liam collapses onto a sofa, utterly gobsmacked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he whispers. 

“Would you have listened?” Killian sits down next to him. “Would you have believed it? All you ever do is tease me and treat me like I’m still sixteen. How would you have reacted to the news that I was dating Emma if you hadn’t seen us together with your own eyes?” 

Liam is silent. He’s ashamed of himself and for once he allows himself to fully feel that shame. Killian is right. He has treated his brother as a child, even though he clearly isn’t one anymore. Not just because of his relationship with the princess but because of his accomplishments in his career and the impressive future he has ahead of him, as a Royal Councillor and someday the Prince Consort. 

Liam could not be prouder. 

“You’re right,” he says after a long silence. “I wouldn’t have listened, and I wouldn’t have believed it. But I will now, both those things. Will you tell me the story? How you met Emma and how you fell in love? And—when you have time I’d love to see more about your project.” He clears his throat. “Actually _see_ it, I mean, and do my best to understand.” 

Killian smiles, wide and delighted. It’s the smile of the boy Liam solemnly promised to take care of all those years ago, and it’s the smile of the man that boy has become. 

“I’d love to, brother,” he says. 

-


End file.
